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Eba

Eba (gari dough)

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Eba is a West African dish of cooked gari, stirred into hot water until it forms a thick paste. It is a cooking stage with no new fermentation, served with soup.

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Illustrative serving of off-white eba, molded into a soft dome on a plain plate.

What eba is

Eba is a dough-like cooked paste made from gari and hot water. It is a dish rather than a fermented product. The fermentation happened earlier, when the cassava was prepared as gari.

Eba is usually eaten with soup, and it is served as a family meal in the studies cited here.

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Gari as the base

Gari is cassava that has been fermented, pressed and roasted. Eba depends on the gari's ability to take up hot water and swell into a paste. The gari page describes that preparation.

Sources for this section

Two ways of making it

The 2021 Cameroon and Nigeria study documents two patterns. Some cooks stir the gari into water while it cooks. Others combine boiling water and gari without continued cooking. Texture preferences vary by locality.

A sensory study used about 100 grams of gari with 195 millilitres of hot boiling water, continuously stirred into a smooth, thick paste.

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Biofortified gari

The HarvestPlus recipe book uses vitamin A gari, a biofortified form of the cassava product. Its serving panel gives four wraps, a one minute cook time and five minutes of preparation. The mass of a wrap is not stated.

Sources for this section

Limits of the sources

The sources do not establish a storage duration, a holding temperature or a test for residual cyanogens in finished cassava. Cooked eba should not be stored on the strength of these pages alone.

Sources for this section

History

The inspected sources date the Nigerian and Cameroonian studies and the 2023 recipe book. They describe eba as a common family dish. They do not establish an origin or first date.

Ingredients

Gari
Amount not stated
quantity not given by the source
Water
Amount not stated
quantity not given by the source

Method

Risks and precautions

The inspected sources do not establish a finished-cassava cyanogen test, a storage duration or a holding target for eba. Do not hold cooked eba without a source-supported control.

  1. Boil the water. The HarvestPlus method uses six cups of hot boiling water, 250 millilitres per cup.
  2. Add the gari gradually to the boiling water while stirring until a smooth, thick paste forms. The HarvestPlus method uses four cups of vitamin A gari.
  3. Cook and stir for about two minutes, as the HarvestPlus method directs. Keep two more cups of water to loosen the paste if a softer consistency is wanted.
  4. Serve with soup or sauce.

Places

Nigeria

Documented use · Country evidence

Study and recipe-book context. Not an origin.

See Nigeriaon the mapLocation source 1 → · Location source 2 →

Cameroon

Documented use · Country evidence

Consumption and preference study context. Not an origin.

See Cameroonon the mapLocation source 1 →

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